Texas Southern (2-5, 0-0) at Prairie View A&M (1-4, 0-0) – 8:00 PM EST
While the eyes of most of the nation will be on the big Pachuca-FC Juarez BBVA MX football match tonight, the UTR Game of the Day will feature a pair of SWAC contenders as the Tigers of Texas Southern visit the Prairie View A&M Panthers. The highlight of Texas Southern’s season so far has been a 76-74 victory at Wyoming where the Tigers came back from 21 points down in the second half to win in overtime. Michael Weathers led the Tigers with 21 points in that game.
Prairie View played their first three games of the season in a multi-team event at Louisville where they lost to Little Rock and beat Evansville before losing to the hometown Louisville Cardinals and subsequently had to pause for COVID-19 reasons. They resumed in late December with losses at Washington State and at TCU, but this will be the first home game for the Panthers this season. Cam Mack leads the Panthers with 15 points per game so far.
OTHER NEWS, NOTES, AND HIGHLIGHTED GAMES
-Minnesota has been great at home and bad on the road and yesterday was no different. Iowa won 86-71 in a game where the Hawkeyes really didn’t even need to sweat.
-Maryland got a huge road win against Illinois. This raises two questions…Is Maryland better than we thought, and is Illinois not quite as good as we thought?
-Providence v Xavier was the craziest game of the day. With about 7 minutes to go, Xavier had a 5 point lead. Providence went on a frenetic 14-2 run to build a 7 point lead in the final minute. So, of course, after a Xavier 3, a Providence TO, a Xavier bucket and another Providence TO, Xavier ended up winning on a last second shot! A great win for the Musketeers as they continue to add to an already pretty good resume.
-Winthrop is still unbeaten after their win against Gardner Webb.
-TEMPLE AT SMU (American). Shouldn’t be too tough of a test for SMU. They’ve got to finish strong if they want to make the field, but I think they’re good enough to do it.
-UCONN AT DEPAUL (Big East). UConn has cracked the rankings and has a winnable conference road game tonight where they should be able to hold serve.
-COLORADO AT UTAH (Pac 12). This is a decent Utah team, but probably a better Colorado team. If Colorado wants to be securely inside the bubble this is the kind of road game they need to be able to win.
-LOYOLA CHICAGO AT INDIANA STATE (Missouri Valley). Loyola Chicago is a team to pay attention to. The focus is on Drake, but Loyola also has a chance of making some noise in March.
-BOISE STATE AT WYOMING (Mountain West). Wyoming seems to be improving, and this won’t be a cakewalk for Boise State, but it is a game that the Broncos should be able to pull off.